"We are filing this complaint on
behalf of all
consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,"
said Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "In addition to promoting the free
choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards
and
cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we've brought fair and
equitable options to consumers worldwide."

Opera is seeking the following
actions from the EU to
"keep Microsoft in line" with respects to its competitors:

Remove
Internet Explorer from its Windows
operating systems. Opera is also asking that Microsoft allow for other
web
browsers to be pre-installed with Windows along with desktop icons for
each
respective browser.

Force
Microsoft to comply with open Web
standards brought forth by Web-authoring communities.

"Our complaint is necessary to get
Microsoft to amend
its practices," said Jason Hoida, Deputy General Counsel for Opera.
"The European Court of First Instance confirmed in September that
Microsoft has illegally tied Windows Media Player to Windows. We are
simply
asking the Commission to apply these same, clear principles to the
Internet
Explorer tie, a tie that has even more profound effects on consumers
and
innovation."

In addition, Microsoft was also
forced to provide interoperability
information to its software competitors and reduce the royalties for
its
software licenses and patents. To add insult to injury, Microsoft was
also
forced to pay 80 percent of the European Commission’s legal
fees.

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The problem is that stupid people having problems with the Opera browser will call Microsoft for support. But it came with my operating system.

I would agree Windows without IE is a good solution but you should never be forced to carry a competitors product in your own distribution. How would you download a Browser without one though. I can only laugh at the irony.

Its obvious that the EU commission has a dislike for Microsoft. If this passes I hope Microsoft charges even more for the software.

EU Govt sticks Microsoft and Microsoft sticks the users with the bill.

You think you will win if MS is forced to include Opera I'm betting even if Opera wins the consumer loses.

As mentioned in the news report I read about it earlier, the problem is the same as the media player, so the solution, if anything, would likely be the same as well. The version of XP they sell in Europe w/o media player can be sold w/o IE as well. And it'll continue not to sell.

Always thought they'd discount it proportionally to the byte-count of the entire distribution. Should knock off at least half a Euro for the IE/MP free version.

Personally I still don't understand the problem. Firefox (etc) is what I use by choice w/o problem of IE being there. Likewise, other media players work fine too.

"A politician stumbles over himself... Then they pick it out. They edit it. He runs the clip, and then he makes a funny face, and the whole audience has a Pavlovian response." -- Joe Scarborough on John Stewart over Jim Cramer